Clifton Expanded Parking Opportunities -consultation

Back in 2011, we looked at the Neighbouhood Partnership proposals for Clifton, adding more parking under a guise which even we were impressed by "to calm traffic". That's a great lie -one to use the next time we get told off for double parking while delivering some of our special adult entertainment products to the Clifton area.

We looked at -and supported- proposals for

• The removal of two bays in Hotwells
• Adding parking in the bottom of Pembroke Road and  further up
• Removing the yellow lines on Clifton Park.
• Adding more parking anywhere it could be found in Princess Victoria Street

It's been nearly two years and we suspected this plan had fallen by the wayside, as the traffic planning officers cornered the councillors and pointed out that the political price of adding eight to ten more parking spaces to the area wasn't worth it. Assuming unrestricted parking on Pembroke road and Hope Chapel Hill, 6 more residents (i.e. voters) would get somewhere to park overnight. If the clifton village parking added an extra four spaces, with a 2h limit, then an eight hour day would add 24 parking opportunities. That's 30 votes overall -max. Yet the political capital spent up on trying to fight the cycling city in one part of the city would be high -because you'd be having to say "we won't spend any money providing safe crossings of Pembroke Road, or the east end of Clifton Park" -issues that also matter to Clifton voters -and potentially more than 30 a day.

Good news! Over Christmas -when the schoolparents would have been away, the consultation for the Traffic Regulation Order to add these spaces has arrived!

Not only that -they propose to add a space by taking away a proposed on-road cycle parking buildout! Finally a part of the city has stood up to this invasion of bicycles, by opting to provide a short stay parking opportunity for a car instead  -leaving cyclists with some insecure bollards that only the foolhardy would use.



To invest in adding 30 parking opportunities a day over making walking and cycling safe is a bold move -one for which we congratulate the two councillors for doing! They must have felt that those thirty votes may keep the two liberal democrat councillors safe, despite the fact that their Westminster colleagues are widely derided as the useless lap-dogs of George Osborne and David Cameron, Presumably they recognised that the people trying to walk or cycle in Clifton are poor people, unlikely to live in the area -or if they do, unlikely to vote.

We in the Bristol Traffic team are overjoyed that in one part the city, the people and the councillors have finally listened to what we have  been saying since 2008; pandering to the cyclists and pedestrians is a mistake!

Looking back at the old days, when the late Chris Hutt was our Clifton Correspondent, what was the third post in our history? Photographic proof that Range Rovers didn't have anywhere to park near the schools except the pavements.


Clifton has always been a special place for us -as much a centre of the driving and parking community as Stokes Croft -albeit with less run-down vehicles-so are excited about this new proposal, part of what we now term, the anticycling-city.

We strongly encourage everyone who supports us, who wants our streets clear of tax-dodging cyclists, for us not to be held up by pedestrians trying to get over zebra crossings, to read the TRO, and respond praising it fully.

We would particularly like for respondents to draw out the proposal "to remove the cycle parking place in Princess Victoria Street (not in force on-site)". This is the best example of how this TRO represents a bold action by the residents and councillors to do something nobody else in the inner city has done -to fight back!

Walthamising Hotwells

One of the Clifton Traffic Calming proposals -voted for, with support from the Waltham Forest Faction of the ruling LibDem party, was to remove some yellow lines from this road "to calm traffic", with a key justification being this is near a school and it would improve safety. This perfect Walthamisation: to improve the facilities for us, the motorists, using the walking and cycling part of the council budget, and claiming it is for "their own good". Waltham Forest excels in this, such as in the downgrading of a route to the Olympics, though we are surprised at how much it cost to make it so easy to PavePark. We in Bristol don't need such help.

This is the road covered. There are some buildouts already, one positioned to protect the wingmirrors of cars, and room on the other side of the road to park. The target area must be further down the hill.

Ah yes, here it is. A narrow stretch, two chicanes and then a wide space -wide enough to get two small cars into.

But here's a question: is this worth spending political capital on? Barbara Janke, Cllr for Clifton (Waltham Forest Ward), is in charge of a minority council that often cites its green foundations as a way of differentiating it. To remove some double yellow lines "to calm traffic" is going to get bad press in the green-troublemaker news outlets (fortunately, not the BBC or Evening Post), and embarrass others in the council. For what? Two parking spaces.

It may seem odd, but we in the Bristol Traffic project are against the proposal for two reasons. One is this: there are more important places to add parking areas that a back road near Hotwells

The other --and this is key-- is this: double yellow lines provide Clifton parents with designated dropoff areas on the school run. Those two parking spaces would be wasted on residents or commuters, as only two people a day will benefit from each new space; four people per day on a weekday, dropping down to one person/day on a weekend. Twelve vehicles a week. Whereas as a short-stay parking area, you could have ten parents a morning queuing up to do dropoffs, push the kids out and carry straight on into the city, without having to get out the car.

It is far more valuable for parental dropoff than for resident and commuter parking, and if the councillors don't realise this, they are talking to the residents and not the school parents. If we sent our kids to this school, we'd be in touch with Barbara Janke and others defending our right to park here, instead of saying "yes, we think two more residents should park here." Who cares about the residents? That's four voters, compared to the possibly twenty that ten families could offer.

The other thing is that traffic calming claim looks, well, weak. You could push it for Pembroke Road -you can get up to speed. But here? Even with a buildout dropped enough to let vans go over it, you can't keep your speed up, you have to give way at the bottom anyway.

For the sake of twelve extra vehicle parking opportunities a week, Barbara and Terry are going to make enemies of everyone in the school, as well as devalue the entire "LibDem are green" brand. Admittedly, their Westminster School and Parliament compatriots are doing the same thing, but if you look at the recent election results, not only did the Green party take a LibDem seat, they came second in a few other wards. The cost of adding two parking spaces here -both financial and political - doesn't justify it. Two happy residents, some commuters who aren't even in the same ward as the councillors, and 40-50 annoyed parents plus the local green troublemakers blogging about it -and maybe even letting the evening post in on the joke, so that Barbara gets laughed at as much as Gary "bus stop" Hopkins did.

This is just political ineptitude.

Pembroke Road parking opportunities

Driving further north on Pembroke Road, we come to an area where all the parking spaces are taken. But it's still a wide road, and you can easily get up to 45 along it. No junctions, no zebra crossings, no mini-roundabouts, nothing to get in your way. Perfect. Admittedly, there's one or two bicycles to swerve past, and few schoolkids sprinting to the safety of the traffic islands, but a quick tap on your horn sorts that out.

Look in the other direction, towards the city. The roads are wide, but now there's a bus stop, a pedestrian, and a cyclist.

And everywhere: double yellow lines.

This leads us to our real metric of "where is there room to remove double yellow lines?" It's obvious, when you think about it.

Wherever there is room for people to cycle without getting in the way of important people in cars, there is space to add more parking.

There you have it. A nice simple metric of where we can put more parking. And its important to do this, because otherwise, the pedalling and walking factions, who are secretly defying the Waltham Forest faction in the council, would love nothing better than to put in bicyle lanes along stretches of road -and in a road this wide, they could even try segregation. Because of the double yellow lines, nobody is going to fight back to say "No! This removes the place where we have parked our car for years!"

This is why we need to Walthamize this stretch of Pembroke Road -because it is the only way we, the important people, can resist the so-called "progress" of those subversives, a progress that is really the continuation of the War On Motorists in a different disguise.

Fraternal Greetings from Stokes Croft to Waltham Forest

While this site has tended to document the Walthamization of Bristol -the transformation of parts of the city into little parts of the elusive Freewheeler's London district "Waltham Forest", today we are pleased to see the flow of urban features has reversed, and Waltham Forest is now a little bit of Stokes Croft.

People of Waltham Forest: Welcome to our city! There are many other aspects of Stokes Croft you may wish to copy! With bars, cafes, bicycles drugs and paid-for-sex, it is Britain's mini-Amsterdam!

Clifton Park: limited extra parking opportunities here

One area where the Clifton Residents have convinced Barbara Janke, the local councillor and leader of the Waltham Forest Faction in the council, is Clifton Park in Clifton. We drove over on a school-run morning to assess the viability of the idea.

Well, it's wide road, but there's enough parking already on it stop the troublemakers trying to sneak in a bike path or two.

Looking towards the suspension bridge, the school keep clear zone and the zebra crossing zig-zags are both used for school run parents, the zebra crossing providing a way for the kids so dropped off to get to school safely.

You could push for it's removal, but that would make dropping kids at Clifton High harder.

Further east, towards Pembroke Road, something catches our eye. A clear space.

Admittedly, it is on a blind corner and if you approach it at speed it's where you'd swing in. Even if a bit of space was left in yellow at the end, the rule "if you park next to a legally parked car -it's still legal" would apply, so it wouldn't work.

Looking at the placement of bicycles on the road, and the oncoming cars, it's not clear that's the road here is wide enough for extra parking. Furthermore, as the road reaches Pembroke Road shortly further on, there's often a bit of a traffic jam in the morning. Having two lanes of traffic here helps a bit.

What is important though is to stop the walking/cycling troublemakers from noticing that there is no safe place to cross this road other than the zebra crossing in the first two photographs, which google maps tells us is 250 metres away. For someone to cross the road safely (and once we ban Jaywalking, legally), that's 500 metres of exercise. For their own health, as well as safety.

The big risk is that somebody pushes to get a zebra put in here or by the wide Clifton Park/Pembroke Road junction, as that would add at least 20s on the school run. A bit of Walthamization would see this off before the idea even got raised.

Plot 6: bus station or parking?

For all those entrants to the Friday Quiz: behind the purple fence with the no skateboard or ball games signage is a temporary car park. Temporary. We need something more permanent.

This is why it's exciting to hear that the infamous plot six, the now defunct post-office-railway-integrated sorting/delivery office may well be turned into a multi-storey long-stay car park, and not, as some troublemakers demanded, a transport hub for buses, trains and bicycles.

Providing an integrated transport hub here would merely encourage people to use train+bus, or train+bike, and not offer the revenue opportunities of, say, a five storey car park.

Two issues

• We hope the car park is SUV friendly, as Cabot Circus is, and not 1980s-legacy-galleries style.
• This is going to increase demand for road access to the area, especially as the Portishead railway line is not going ahead. We propose recognising that the Coronation Road cycle path is a waste of space, and turning that entire pavement into another inbound lane. Yes, some trees will have to go, but they will grow back elsewhere. And as Elf-King Ap Rees says, the South Bristol Link road is critical to make commuting by car into Bristol quicker. Anyone who says otherwise is making "mischievous misleading comments"

We praise the Waltham Forest Faction of Bristol council for their plans, and the assistance of North Somerset and S Gloucs councils.

On this topic, we saw an article recently arguing that the suburban dream in Bristol is in trouble. The actions to improve driving options from North Somerset show that this is false. What has changed is this: the important people in the city, rather than live in the fringe suburbs, have moved out of the city altogether, into the picturesque towns and villages outside: Portishead, Clevedon, Wotton-under-edge, etc. While public transport to the fringe of the city is collapsing, those with money still need to come in, and the increasing use of road space by cyclists, resident parking schemes and expanded pavements is anti-capitalist. It is critical that Bristol Council -who would otherwise pander to their electorate- recognise that the true wealth of the city depends on these out-of-city commuters, and meet their needs: fast wide roads, low-cost in-city parking. The Plot Six and South Bristol Link Road are only part of what we need.

Tesco's plans to Walthamize the cycling city in the back.

We are impressed. Every day that one of the team members has been down to Cheltenham Road this week, there's been a vehicle or two outside Tesco. What was once one of the showcase "cycle city" and "Greater Bristol Bus Network" routes has been returned to the tax paying driver -and as vans and lorries pay more road tax, they deserve to use it first.

"Slug" sends a couple of Pics from 09:15 on Friday 17 June showing a security van outside tesco,

And right outside the credit union, another lorry, MX07GJV

As slug says " It can be very dangerous for a cyclist to cycle in the cycle lane because it is to the left of traffic turning left. So the lorry driver out of concern for the potential danger that inexperienced cyclists are putting themselves in, decided to park on the double yellow lines ... ignoring the no unloading sign.

Behind the vehicle you can see all the way to the security van that is also parked on the cycle lane -and in between the lane is completely empty! Mission accomplished! no cyclists Left Hooked at Ashley junction this morning.

Interestingly, we have a different video of the same stretch of road from someone else taken about ten minutes later. This video is interesting because it is from the perspective of one of the tax-dodgers, someone who is trying to get across the city "after 9am because the roads are quieter." See that? These people have deliberately chosen to commute outside "the rush hour" because they prefer it. But that reduction in road traffic creates an illusion of safety -and encourages more of such behaviour.

At 0:03 there's another cyclist on Freemantle Road -heading towards the university or Clifton, then our underemployed camera-enabled tax-avoider descends Nugent Hill, an option forbidden to cars, especially since they put that island in at the bottom to stop right turns, a feature few motorists have managed to deal with. Our troublemaker negotiates that island by abusing the contraflow bike lane on Arley Hill, then flips into the left lane to undertake the stationary traffic to wait for a green light.

While waiting we see important people in cars and taxis, some public transport users, and unimportant pedestrians, and another cyclist at 1:58 crossing over to the contraflow. Because The A38 here, it could unify or divide the city. The council wanted to make it a showcase for the cycle city program, encouraging people from Bishopston (out of town; to the left) to head into the city centre, down this very road!

That is something we need to stop, which is why we are grateful for Tesco and its support. Because as well as unifying the cyclists, it could divide them. It and Muller road are the two roads that anyone cycling around north Bristol has to encounter, and if we can only roll back any pro-cycling "enhancements" there, then we can discourage anyone not just from cycling on these main roads, but even get across them.

That is why it is so essential to fight them on the streets, and why the Tesco delivery process is helping transform this road, and hence the whole of north Bristol.

At 2:14 you can see the bicycle head in to town. Although they think they have a lane to themselves, at 2:22 you can see their mistake -the security van has moved on since 09:15, but another delivery van has taken its place. Then at 2:34, a car half on the pavement, half on the bike lane. That bike lane is considered unsafe anyway, which is why they and the next lorry are blocking it. What's changed since the photos earlier is that the lorry seems to be deciding to pull out now; it's flipped its indicators on. The tax dodger goes past, and at 2:47 you can see another paveparked van; a 2:49 a similar car. All it takes is one or two vehicles doing this, all the time, every day, and people will be discouraged not just from commuting along this road by bicycle, but across it.

At 3:04 our troublemaker does a U-turn and heads out of town, showing that the bike lane there is in its usual state: short stay parking for shop customers and staff. This bike lane has been reclaimed!

At 3:36, they are now waiting to turn right towards montpelier, where you can see that the row of vehicles blocking the left lane do actually turn it into a bikes-only lane, albeit because nobody actually wants to turn left. Anyone turning left will have to swing over from the right hand lane, which might be a surprise to anyone cycling down it, of which we can see a couple at 3:50.

Then, finally, at 3:54, our errant tax dodger turns right, and then left into Montpelier, where they can feel slightly safer.

You see that? How the quiet bits of the city, Cotham and Montpelier, can be made cycling unfriendly not by adding any anti-cycling infrastructure, but by making it unpleasant to cross the roads between them. We don't need to ask the council for special anti-bicycle features, the way they do in Waltham Forest, all we need to do is park our delivery vans where we want on the roads the cyclist have to cross. It only takes a couple of HGVs to set an example, and once it's begun, every else will copy. What was a bike lane has become a parking area, not just to achieve the tactical goal: park outside our destination, but to achieve a strategic one: to knife the cycling city dream in the back.

Whose streets? Ours! For parking in whenever we want!

Tesco Walthamises Cheltenham Road

As we stated many months ago, a new Tesco mini-mart would finally give us a reason to park along Cheltenham Road.

What we hadn't expected was how rapidly it would transit from a boring, functional bus lane and bike lane into a short stay shopping street. Tesco have brought the high street back again!

Notice here, on Thursday June 17, 10:18 am how the delivery staff have placed some warning signs out. At first we thought they were to warn cyclists not to go straight into the back of the lorry, and were a bit worried that Tesco may be starting to care.

A closer look reveals the real isse. Because the lorry has a loader that drops to ground level, they don't want any shopper to park their car on the double yellow lines too close to the back of the lorry. They are concerned about the customers, not the passing underpeople.

Here's a video of the same scene

Notice how you can just make out the bike lane underneath the lorry as it raises the floor.

Many of the troublemakers have complained that Tesco moved in to the area to profit from a road going upmarket. Untrue. Tesco moved in there because it wasn't upmarket enough, because people walked and cycled round, even though it was a main road with plenty of room for lorries and parking.

Tesco moved in to the area to save Stokes Croft from itself!

News update

The team is being too lazy to do some serious reporting right now, but here are some news updates.

1. Crap Walking And Cycling in Waltham Forest is offline, along with all its artwork. While some people discuss why this is the case, and consider whether any of its comments about the Waltham Forest NHS or local council have, in some way, been considered libellous, we are pleased to provide the true explanation.

Waltham Forest acted as a control group in the Cycling England project. Some cities were funded to add more facilities to their city to encourage poor people to cycle. How would it be possible to determine if any increase in cycle usage was related to this work, compared to other trends like the rising cost of fuel? The answer: a control group. Waltham Forest, then, was encouraged to spend no money at all on improving walking or cycling in the city. To see whether motivational newsletters alone would suffice, Waltham Forest was funded to produce joyful "wouldn't it be better on a bicycle" leaflets and such like, things that could be stuck up at NHS hospitals that the staff and all patients would drive to -to see if this alone was sufficient. As the crapwalthamforest blog showed: it was not. With the wrapping up of the Cycling England project, Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest has been terminated. Note also that Waltham Forest itself will be terminated -however the lessons from the Waltham Forest experiment have been learned, and councils all round Britain will be encouraged to Walthamize their neighbourhoods.


2. An M4-A4174 link route isn't going to get funded, as noted by the BBC, "Hopes for M4 link to Avon Ring Road dashed".

We have some bad news for whoever in the BBC wrote that last article, with phrases like  "Hopes for an M4 link to the Avon Ring Road near Bristol have been dashed for at least another four years" and "it could have an important impact on the Bristol and Bath Science Park".

Dear BBC provinical reporting team: there is an M4 link the Avon Ring Road; it is called "the M32". Please consult a map of Bristol before writing an article next time. There is also an option of getting to it from the M4/M5 junction and down the A38, and while a bit longer, it avoids the kingswood to M32 traffic jams caused by people trying to drive round the ring road from Bath to the North Fringe.

The article should in fact be titled: "Hopes for yet another  M4 link to the Avon Ring Road dashed". It could then raise the fact that Chris Skidmore, the Conservative MP for Kingswood, doesn't understand the theory of induced demand any more than the head of North Somerset council. Specifically it isn't enough to add a new link road for today's demand; the new link road will encourage more traffic, more driving in, more people living out of Bristol and commuting by car to the North Fringe area. It would have been better to admit this and rather than push for a single extra link road, push for a new link road to be added every five years, so as to keep up with planned demand.

Walthamize the planet -and have a nice day!

Breaking news: parking restrictions encourage higher vehicle speeds

The new "neighbourhood funding" schemes are great for us, the drivers, as we can use our money to get what we want: parking, without any city-wide initiative like public transport, sustainability or cycling getting in the way. This is why we are delighted to cover the "DEVOLVED TRANSPORT SCHEMES FOR 2011/12" for Clifton and Cliftonwood, which will be up for discussion on Tuesday at 19:00 above Jack's Brasserie behind the waterfront TSB building.

The important people in Clifton have been successful in adding one-way streets by Clifton-college, so making easier to do Range-Rover and Volvo XC60 dropoff, and held up the provisioning of bicycle parking on the grounds that it degrades the listed buildings. However there still aren't enough places to park our important cars. How to add more parking, without appearing blatantly selfish? The answer is obvious: push for it on road safety grounds.

This is the tactic planned for tomorrow, with the following proposals in the set.

• Lay-by at the bottom of Hope Chapel Hill: Existing parking restrictions encourage higher vehicle speeds
• Pembroke Road (St.Pauls Road end). More on-street parking would reduce vehicle speeds.

These claims are far better than the ones for Clifton Park and Princess Victoria Street, both of which just say "existing parking restrictions are too extensive", by which they mean "the bit by the side of the road where people cycle could be used by important people".

We hope all our local supporters turn up for this, and support the proposals and so make sure that we outnumber any cycling/living street troublemakers who sneak in and start calling us selfish gits who are more concerned about having somewhere to park our third car outside our houses than doing something to fundamentally improve Bristol's liveability. Those people don't realise that having somewhere to park our third Landrover -it's more than just a car- does improve Bristol's Liveability. Certainly it makes it easier to walk from the Landrover to our house, and by saving us driving around, reduces pollution and the CO2 emissions from our 3L V8 engines.

Futhermore, once that parking is in, it will be that much harder to put in bike lanes, so any ideas for adding some segregated route up Pembroke Road -our secret high speed alternative to Whiteladies Road- would be killed forever. It's important to do this now, before alternate transport plans progress.

Yes, those troublemakers will say "if we want parking we should have voted for the RPZ", but they miss the point: that would have restricted the number of vehicles we could own. Furthermore, by reducing the number of vehicles parked on the roads on a weekday, vehicle speeds have increased and Clifton is now a more dangerous place to walk. We have a spreadsheet we've just made up to prove it!

Note also that a large number of the other schemes (Ambrose Road, Cliftonwood Road, Alfred Hill, Westbourne Place and Redcliffe hill) are complaints by people about how parking is interfering with pedestrians. It is important to attend to stop this, otherwise the troublemakers will pick up on the complete hypocrisy of pushing for extra parking to calm roads in some parts of the area, while having to introduce bollards and dropped kerbs in other parts. We want parking everywhere, and no RPZ in our way.

Walthamize the planet, and have a nice day.

Jamaica Street: more hints of Waltham Forest

Our next video of the tour of the RPZ shows the Stokes Croft end of Dighton Street - Jamaica Street. Again, it's Walthamization is ongoing. This road marks the border between Kingsdown and the part of the city where work takes place -and that means vans and vehicles: important people.

First they nip past The Bell pub, then head down Jamaica Street towards Dighton Street. One of the park cars tries to do the pull-out-no-signal trick but the cyclist is pootling along so slowly they avoid getting hit, no need for the driver to try the sorry-didn't-see-you gambit. The cyclist, so stressed by this decides to head back for the Bell Pub on the off-road bike path. This feature has been here for about 20 years, the widening of the pavement to allow this is probably treasured in Bristol cycling history.

After a short distance it drops down to the road where the cyclist would encounter the van parked at the end. However, today they can't get there because there is a roadwork sign in the middle of the bike path.

What does our cyclist do? Instead of getting off the bicycle and walking, the way they should, they do something worse. They pick up the sign and throw it to one side! Then the brick that was there to hold the sign in place!

Someone driving a car could be in a collision with the roadworks. Whoever put this sign up was clearly thinking about the safety of motorists, yet by moving the sign to one side they could create a collision. This is selfish and dangerous!

Dighton Street: An update

We are busy watching the Walthamization of Dighton Street -all is going well, at least according to this video.



this time not only is another car parked outside Pizza Go-Go in the bike lane, showing how bike lanes benefit takeaways by providing somewhere to park, we see the minicab AE04NDG, taxi #2525, taking full advantage of those cycling facilities.

First, it's stopped part on the pavement, part on the road -but note how no wheel is actually in the bike lane. Then it pulls out -no need to indicate, it's a quiet day, and drives forward, where an ASL provides somewhere for the vehicle to wait for the light to change.

Such use of the cycling facilities of this part of the city ensures that the residents of Bristol do get some use of them. Note how our tax dodging cycle camera person (sorry!) opted to use none of them on this part of the journey. If they aren't going to use such features, well, we motorists may as well!

Pizza Gogo: Walthamizing Dighton Street, Bristol

We are pleased to introduce a new verb, "to Walthamize". This means to turn any european city into a little piece of Waltham Forest -that part of London that is forever immortalised in Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest. One day we'd like to visit there, and we would welcome the elusive author of that site contacting us so we could arrange this tour. He would cycle round while we drove behind, honking at him for being in our way.

Today though, we are celebrating the Walthamizing of Dighton Street -simply by adding a new takeaway pizza outlet next to a bike lane.

This is lovely. The pizza chain had realised that the provisioning of a white-lined, double-yellow-lined stretch of road meant there would be somewhere for short-stay customers to park to wait 10-15 minutes for a pizza, and here at 17:00 on a Sunday evening, you can already see it is bringing in the trade.

Note also, behind the customers BS06OUC and YU53NUY, the line of other cars. These appear to be student families unloading, but what is notable is that the building works have been taken down -finally we can park in this bike lane again. And with Pizza Go-Go, we have a reason!

Walthamization: it's the right thing to do.